In an instant the bee-hunter was at pretty Margery’s side, making his peace by zealous apologies and winning protestations of respect and concern.  The mortified girl was soon appeased; and, after consulting together for a minute, they went to the canoe to communicate to the husband and wife what they had seen.

“The whiskey after all is likely to prove our worst enemy,” said the bee-hunter as he approached.  “It would seem that in moving the barrels some of the liquor has escaped, and the nose of an Injin is too quick for the odor it leaves, not to scent it.”

“Much good may it do them,” growled Gershom—­“they’ve lost me that whiskey, and let them long for it without gettin’ any, as a punishment for the same.  My fortun’ would have been made could I only have got them two barrels as far as Fort Dearborn before the troops moved!”

“The barrels might have been got there, certainly,” answered le Bourdon, so much provoked at the man’s regrets for the destroyer which had already come so near to bringing want and ruin on himself and family, as momentarily to forget his recent scene with pretty Margery; “but whether anything would have been in them is another question.  One of those I rolled to the brow of the hill was half empty as it was.”

“Gershom is so troubled with the ague, if he don’t take stimulant in this new country,” put in the wife, in the apologetic manner in which woman struggles to conceal the failings of him she loves.  “As for the whiskey, I don’t grudge that in the least; for it’s a poor way of getting rich to be selling it to soldiers, who want all the reason liquor has left ’em, and more too.  Still, Gershom needs bitters; and ought not to have every drop he has taken thrown into his face.”

By this time le Bourdon was again sensible of his mistake, and he beat a retreat in the best manner he could, secretly resolving not to place himself any more between two fires, in consequence of further blunders on this delicate subject.  He now found that it was a very different thing to joke Whiskey Centre himself on the subject of his great failing, from making even the most distant allusion to it in the presence of those who felt for a husband’s and a brother’s weakness, with a liveliness of feeling that brutal indulgence had long since destroyed in the object of their solicitude.  He accordingly pointed out the risk there was that the Indians should make the obvious inference, that human beings must have recently been in the hut, to leave the fresh scent of the liquor in question behind them.  This truth was so apparent that all felt its force, though to no one else did the danger seem so great as to the bee-hunter.  He had greater familiarity with the Indian character than any of his companions, and dreaded the sagacity of the savages in a just proportion to his greater knowledge.  He did not fail, therefore, to admonish his new friends of the necessity for vigilance.